Random blog posts since 2001. Other randomness since 1984.

Random blog posts since 2001. Other randomness since 1984.

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My name is Janet. I was born in 1984 on the cusp of Aquarius and Pisces. I've had this site since 2001. I love to watch/read anything to do with vampires. I'm interested in learning about mythology, serial killers, and various other things that don't generally interest people my age. I tend to discuss my problems in this blog, so if you don't want to read my whining about my health, then you might want to go now. There's a fanlisting for me that you could join, if you want. (No pressure.)

Sincerely

Things can change in our lives so quickly that we don’t always know how to react. I think something shifted recently and I’m just now figuring out how to react to it. So this may come out bitchier than it probably should or more pathetic sounding than I want it to, because the feelings surrounding it are so fresh, but I’m not going to apologize for that because I’m sick of apologizing for anything and everything. I’m not perfect, but I’m not the cause of every problem that every person has and I need to accept that. So this is me trying to do that and trying to rationalize what has happened:

I realized that K was probably going to drop me as a friend right around the time that she dropped A. Something had shifted in how she interacted around that time. The first sign I noticed was that she changed her Twitter account completely, not just the name, but the entire account. She quickly added a group of about 15 or so people. I wasn’t one of those people, even though I had been in the past. I had an inkling that it was the beginning of the end, but a few days later, after I sent her a “What’s up?” message on Facebook, I was added to the Twitter account. Still, I had the feeling like I was on some sort of weird probation with her. Things were “okay” between us for a couple of weeks and she would include me on her Follow Friday posts and her other trending topic things (like the “beautiful people” or “sweet people” type ones), but I’d gone from being one of the first people included to being one of the last. Actually, that had happened a couple of times before she dropped A, so maybe that was the first real clue.

On the Sunday before she dropped me, she sent me a tweet saying that she had some kind of dream that she won some money and was able to fix my family’s problems with our house and other stuff. I thought that was sweet and felt kind of like maybe things were going to get better, but I didn’t know what to say in response and I told her this. Then I forgot her birthday. Now, I should have known that that would be a big deal for her because she got extremely pissed a few years ago on my behalf when online and offline friends seemed to forget my birthday. I apologized a couple of days later, but it was too late, I had been dropped on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube, Instagram, and probably any other social media account where we had been friends. It was sudden and sort of brutal, but it was also not brutal and not sudden at the same time. And that little feeling of not being so upset was shocking for me.

I sent a message to her, not asking for her to reconsider, but to ask her what I had done. Like I’ve mentioned many times, I’ve gone through my life feeling like every problem is somehow my fault. The negative feelings I felt around the end of this once important friendship were related to the idea that I was the one who was to blame for everything. I didn’t hear back from her. I still haven’t.

As I came to terms with the idea that this friendship was really over, I went through on the different social media platforms and removed her from my friends list. If she didn’t want to be my friend on them, then I felt that I really had no reason to continue to follow her on them any more. Generally, when someone unfollows me, I don’t really care if I’m still following them somewhere. Usually, I don’t even notice or, if I do notice, I just try not to make a big deal of it. This one, I felt that in order for me to move on, I needed to not see anything of hers.

After about four and a half years of friendship, it was a difficult and a bit tedious job to cut her out of my life. It was difficult, not just because I had to do the unfollowing, but because I had to start questioning other things about my life: Was I going to keep our mutual friends? Or would they end up choosing between us? God, I hope that doesn’t happen, but I know that it might. Do I really like things like Twilight and Hello Kitty and cupcakes and other stuff as much as I thought I did? Or do I just like them because they were things that she enjoyed, too? Those were easy to figure out. I was a Twilight fan before the movies came out. I’ve been into Hello Kitty stuff since before she was even born. And cupcakes? Well, how could I ever hate them? I did feel a little relieved that I no longer had to pretend to like Megan Fox anymore. (I don’t hate Megan Fox, but I never liked her.) Because she’s British, is it okay for me to still like stuff that is British in origin? Fuck yeah, it is. I liked the UK before I ever talked to her.

I know it may seem weird that I had to go through this thought process over this stuff, but we had been friends for a while and, even though I’ve never met her in person, I still know that after four years, I had changed little things about my personality so that I wouldn’t lose that friendship. And yeah, that sounds pathetic, but that’s what I had always done. I did a chameleon sort of thing when friendships would start because I have a history of friendships just ending suddenly and I never wanted to be into something or say something that might piss off that friend so much that they determined that I was no longer worthy of their friendship. Basically, I am an insecure person and I express that insecurity by trying to do people-pleasing behavior so that I won’t be alone. The insecurity probably has to do with the fear of abandonment, which is one of those little Borderline things that makes life so enjoyable.

As I’ve dealt with the fallout of losing this friendship, it’s also shed light on some long-term issues that I’ve had. I understand, to a certain extent, that my behavior and my insecurity pushes people away. I also understand that that same insecurity and behavior inspires some less-kind people to treat me in negative ways. That reinforces the behaviors because it teaches me that I really don’t deserve better. And I understand that I always knew that my friendship with her was possibly going to end in some dramatic or mostly unexpected way because I had seen other friendships that she had had end in this way. I had had people warn me about the friendship and I had told these people that it was different between the two of us because I wanted to believe it was. I need to see myself as I really am, but I also need to see others for who they really are.

After a few weeks, I realize that I’m not sad that I lost this friendship. I realize that I wasn’t sad when I lost other similar friendships. It isn’t because they didn’t mean something to me. It’s because they didn’t mean what I thought they did to me, and that they never really made me feel happy in the way that I probably should have felt. Having a friend is a great thing, if you’re both being yourselves completely and you both can accept that about one another. Otherwise, you just set yourself up to eventually have things implode. So I need to learn how to be myself in friendships and how to not set unachievable standards for myself and for my friends in these friendships. I need to learn how to express that I don’t like certain things (like in the QC days when I couldn’t tell H that I hated Narnia stuff) or people (Megan Fox) and say words like “no” when I don’t want to do something, which is something I have trouble doing in short- and long-term off-line friendships as well. And I need to not take it personally if someone says no to me. Basically, I still have some “growing up” to do and some emotional maturing that I need to learn how to do, which is what therapy is for…and it’s nice that it’s finally actually teaching me something.

People aren’t perfect. Friendships aren’t perfect. And stressing yourself out to make a friendship work or to make a person like you isn’t a good idea. It only makes life more difficult for you and for the other people in your life. So maybe it’s a good thing that this friendship is gone, not just for me, but for her, too. And maybe any future friendship I enter won’t be entered into in such a “I have to make this perfect” kind of way because that’s just not good.

So…yeah. I guess this didn’t end up so bad or bitchy or mean or any of that. Maybe it still makes me sound like a pathetic person, but that’s okay because I don’t plan on staying that way.

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About Janet Morris

I'm from Huntsville, Alabama. I've got as many college credits as a doctorate candidate, and the GPA of some of them, too. I have a boss by the name of Amy Pond. She's a dachshund. My parents both grew up in Alabama.